Brand Values

This exciting and important topic is not only important to big companies, it is essential for all entrepreneurs and small business owners to learn and know in order to have a successful and lasting brand!

Brand values are at the heart of all effective and memorable brands. Defining your brand’s values is fundamental to building out all other aspects of your brand (read more about what these areas are here).

But first, how do we define what brand values really are? Perhaps marketing guru Seth Godin said it best: "A brand’s value is merely the sum total of how much extra people will pay, or how often they choose, the expectations, memories, stories and relationships of one brand over the alternatives."

They will affect your brand’s aesthetic, voice and, most importantly, the way in which your brand resonates with your target market, giving them a reason to remember you and to choose you. Clear and defined brand values will set you apart from the competition and act as guideposts to direct all of your business and marketing decisions.

Psychologically, brand values allow you to connect with how you want your clients to feel. In the words of Simon Sinek: “Value is a perception, not a calculation. Value is something people feel, not something we tell them they get.”

As you can see, your brand values are pretty powerful!

So what are your brand values? How do they relate to your WHY? How do they relate to your promise to your customer?

And don’t miss this step, for your brand values to be truly effective they have to be articulated as verbs. For example, it’s not “integrity” it’s “always doing the right thing”; it’s not “innovation” it’s “look at the problem from a different angle”.

Steve Jobs once wrote: “To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world, it’s a very noisy world. And we’re not going to get the chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.”

Need help with discovering and articulating your brand’s values? Get in touch: natpark@natparkcollective.com